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VMware Releases Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2, ESX and VirtualCenter Get Upgrades, ESXi Now 100% Free

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

VMware has released Update 2 for Infrastructure 3.5, listing a whole set of updates and features. At the same time, the company has made the license for ESXi completely free, as announced last week during the earnings call.

These are the highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3 (free evaluation here):

Windows Server 2008 support – Windows Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions) is supported as a guest operating system. With VMware’s memory overcommit technology and the reliability of ESX, virtual machine density can be maximized with this new guest operating system to achieve the highest degree of ROI. Guest operating system customizations and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) are not supported with Windows Server 2008.
Enhanced VMotion Compatibility – Enhanced VMotion compatibility (EVC) simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations by automatically configuring server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. Once EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. VirtualCenter will not permit the addition of hosts which cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with those already in the EVC cluster.
Storage VMotion – Storage VMotion from a FC/iSCSI datastore to another FC/iSCSI datastore is supported. This support is extended on ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 1 as well.
VSS quiescing support – When creating quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2003 guests, both filesystem and application quiescing are supported. With Windows Server 2008 guests, only filesystem quiescing is supported. For more information, see the Virtual Machine Backup Guide and the VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Release Notes.
Hot Virtual Extend Support – The ability to extend a virtual disk while virtual machines are running is provided. Hot extend is supported for vmfs flat virtual disks without snapshots opened in persistent mode.
192 vCPUs per host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is 170 and that no more than 3 virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is extended on ESX 3.5 Update 1 as well.

As for the hardware enablement and management:

8Gb Fiber Channel HBAs – Support is available for 8Gb fiber channel HBAs. See the I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
SAS arrays – more configurations are supported. See the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
10 GbE iSCSI initiator – iSCSI over a 10GbE interface is supported. This support is extended on ESX Server 3.5 Update 1, ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Embedded and ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Installable as well.
10 GbE NFS support – NFS over a 10GbE interface is supported.
IBM System x3950 M2 – x3950 M2 in a 4-chassis configuration is supported, complete with hardware management capabilities through multi-node Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) driver and provider. Systems with up to 32 cores are fully supported. Systems with more than 32 cores are supported experimentally.
PMI OEM extension support – Execution of IPMI OEM extension commands is supported.
System health monitoring through CIM providers – More Common Information Model (CIM) providers are added for enhanced hardware monitoring, including storage management providers provided by QLogic and Emulex. LSI MegaRAID providers are also included and are supported experimentally.
CIM SMASH/Server Management API – The VMware CIM SMASH/Server Management API provides an interface for developers building CIM-compliant applications to monitor and manage the health of systems. CIM SMASH is now a fully supported interface on ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
Display of system health information – More system health information is displayed in VI Client for both ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
Remote CLI – Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) is now supported on ESX Server 3.5 as well as ESX Server 3i. See the Remote Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide for more information.

VirtualCenter 2.5 update 2 adds full support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures based on VMware tools heartbeats. This release also extends support for clusters containing mixed combinations of ESX and ESXi hosts, and minimizes previous configuration dependencies on DNS. It also extends support for alarms on the overall health of the server by considering the health of each of the individual system components such as memory and power supplies. Alarms can now be configured to trigger when host health degrades.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 provides the ability of creating a clone of a powered-on virtual machine without any downtime to the running virtual machine. Therefore, administrators are no longer required to power off a virtual machine in order to create a clone of it. Also, you can now automatically authenticate to VirtualCenter using your current Windows domain login credentials on the local workstation, as long as the credentials are valid on the VirtualCenter server.

This capability also supports logging in to Windows using Certificates and Smartcards. It can be used with the VI Client or the VI Remote CLI to ensure that scripts written using the VI Toolkits can take advantage of the Windows credentials of your current session to automatically connect to VirtualCenter.

VMware

Symantec Sets Up Virtualization Lab in Japan

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Symantec today announced that Symantec Japan has opened its new “Virtualisation Solutions Lab” for customers and partners, as the company continues to deliver on its virtualization strategy.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab will enable Symantec Japan to test and optimize Symantec’s products for specific virtual environments quickly, and provide customers and partners with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and see demonstrations of solution deployments for their environments. With this new facility, Symantec Japan claims it can better support its customers and partners who decide to implement virtualization solutions, as market needs for virtualization continue to grow rapidly.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab is located within the Japan Engineering Center at Symantec Japan’s headquarters (Minato-ku, Tokyo), which is responsible for all technological verification required for Symantec’s products before their release into the Japanese market. With the launch of this new facility, the Virtualisation Solutions Lab will introduce comprehensive virtualisation solutions for data centres in VMware environments.

The line-up of solutions to be provided by the Virtualisation Solutions Lab is as follows:

Comprehensive backup solutions using Veritas NetBackup for VMware environments
Failover solutions with high availability of guest OS and VMware applications using Veritas Cluster Server
Backup and restore solutions for P2V (physical to virtual) system images using Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery
Deployment solutions for virtual servers using the Symantec Altiris platform

Symantec Japan plans to work closely with Citrix Systems and Microsoft to test virtualization solutions for Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments at the Virtualisation Solutions Lab in addition to VMware Infrastructure 3. In addition, Symantec Japan plans to organize regular product familiarization seminars as it continues to expand its range of solutions for its customers and partners.

[Source: ITWeb]

Symantec

AppSense Revenues Growing Rapidly

July 25, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

AppSense, provider of user environment management solutions for large-scale environments, reported a 50 % increase in U.S. revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008. Its global business realized a 30 percent increase in worldwide revenue.

AppSense is aggressively focusing on the U.S. market, having doubled its investment in the U.S. over the last two quarters with increased investment planned again for the current fiscal year. New U.S. customers this fiscal year include JP Morgan Chase, Lowes, United Airlines, Wachovia, Wal-Mart, ESPN, Applied Materials, and CB Richard Ellis, among others. AppSense counts 15 of the top 20 banks worldwide as customers, with nine of them actively using AppSense software to personalize their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments.

AppSense’s user environment management solution enables users to have the same look and feel, shortcuts and other settings on a virtual desktop that they had on their PC, while ensuring they adhere to company policies, such as accessing pre-determined printers, applications, networks, drivers and folders. This allows companies to gain the benefits of desktop standardization and automation, including savings in hardware, storage and management oversight, with no impact on a user’s experience.

AppSense’s solution lets IT use a combination of desktop and application delivery methods—such as VDI, presentation virtualization, streamed applications and local and provisioned desktops—and easily and transparently migrate users from a physical to a virtual desktop.

DSA Research Group Releases OpenNebula (ONE) 1.0

July 25, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Recently, the dsa-research group announced that a Technology Preview (TP2) of the OpenNEbula (ONE) Virtual Infrastructure Engine had been made available. Now, a stable release (v1.0) of OpenNebula (ONE) is available for download, again under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.

OpenNebula enables the dynamic allocation of virtual machines on a pool of physical resources, so extending the benefits of existing virtualization platforms from a single physical resource to a pool of resources, decoupling the server not only from the physical infrastructure but also from its physical location.

The last version supports Xen and KVM virtualization platforms to provide the following features and capabilities:

Centralized management, a single access point to manage a pool of VMs and physical resources.

Efficient resource management, including support to build any capacity provision policy and for advance reservation of capacity through the Haizea lease manager

Powerful API and CLI interfaces for monitoring and controlling VMs and physical resources

Easy 3rd party software integration to provide a complete solution for the deployment of flexible and efficient virtual infrastructures

Fault tolerant design, state is kept in a SQLite database.

Open and flexible architecture to add new infrastructure metrics and parameters or even to support new Hypervisors.

Support to access Amazon EC2 resources to supplement local resources with cloud resources to satisfy peak or fluctuating demands.

Ease of installation and administration on UNIX clusters

Open source software released under Apache license v2.0

As engine for the dynamic management of VMs, OpenNebula is being enhanced in the context of the RESERVOIR project (EU grant agreement 215605) to address the requirements of several business use cases.

More information is available here.

Virtualization Pretty Big Down Under

July 24, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Twice as many Australian businesses are using virtualization than the rest of the world, according to analysts, reports Techworld. Gartner says between 8 and 9 % of medium to enterprise businesses are virtualizing their x86 servers, while global uptake remains at about 4 to 5 %.

Gartner’s servers and storage VP Phil Sargeant added that the figures, derived from research into organizational IT maturity, show Australians are spearheading virtualization uptake.

According to Unisys, the figure is even higher, since the 8 to 9 % adoption includes only virtualized systems in production.

EMC Reports Strong Q2 Results, Might Spin Off VMware Anyway

July 24, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

So VMware performed below expectations, but how did parent company EMC do the past quarter? Not too shabby, actually. In its Q2 Earnings conference call (see transcript here), the company outlined that it had performed well against the backdrop of a challenging economic environment, although its outlook for the future was less rosy.

In the second quarter, EMC had revenue growth of 18% (to $3.67 billion), a non-GAAP EPS growth of 20%. EMC’s second-quarter net income rose 13% to $377.5 million, or 18 cents per share, from $334.4 million, or 16 cents a share, a year earlier. EMC backed its January forecast of full-year profit of 78 cents per share, excluding items. It said 2008 revenue would exceed $15 billion, up from its previous outlook of $15 billion.

The results sent EMC shares up a few points, and they got a further boost when EMC opened the door to a VMware spinoff, per report by Reuters. EMC CEO Joe Tucci apparently stated in an interview with Reuters that a VMware spinoff is definitely possible, although it likely wouldn’t happen in 2008.

EMC Corporation

VMware